It would appear that cable TVsubscriptions are on the decline. This is due, in part, to various technological developments which make it easier to receive quality video content without subjecting one's self to the onerous subscription requirements associated with one-sided cable company contracts; it is also due to the fact that abuses of monopolistic power by cable service providers consumers upon consumers continue to go unpunished, and are ever-increasing. This is an important trend.

The possible good news in this trend is that alternative video media sources are cutting into cable's once-taken-for-granted market share, which may, in fact , encourage the cable service providers to reform themselves (at least to the minimum standard required) in order to slow down the erosion of their captive client base. This may be an important response to the anti-cable trend. Hopefully, it will benefit the consumers as a class.

It might be increasingly prudent to invest in companies which are involved in creating and marketing cable alternatives, and in mini-media (the type which you can enjoy on your iPhone, iPad or other mobile device.

If you are already in the applications development business, this may be a good direction in which to focus your attentions and energies. Faithfully,

The author highly recommends that each of his respected readers becomes Pinglerized (a Lingovation™) in order to maximize SEO, search engine ranking, and to exponentially increase both unique visitors and recurring traffic to your website or blog. Leverage this wonderful technology.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Entrepreneurs, Small businesses and consumers, rising up in righteous indignation, are leaning less toward benign resignation to enslavement by the few, and more toward activism in a groundswell of disgust with the status quo. Social media has played a great role in this.

The notion of "Moving Off Of The Grid" is one that is rapidly catching fire amongst the consumer and small business population. They have become increasingly distrustful of these largely uncontrolled organizations. I believe that this signifies a very significant trend that is going to lead to an increased growth in what I shall term "bypass services" -- services that can be used to bypass the local reigning monopolists.

Further, I believe that this trend and tendency will cross many different service sectors from automobile fuels, to energy sources, to telecommunications, to transportation, to healthcare and a variety of other services upon which the populace has come to depend.

This is increasingly evidenced by the acceptance of the idea of sustainability, the market movement toward hybrid automobiles, alternative energy source utilization and the cutting of any umbilical cord which leads to a controlling, monopolistic, plutocratic and domineering mother-figure utility or dominant territorial service provider who likely paid for the territory won in a transaction that was not structured in the public interest.

This increasing distrust of large utilities, sole-source suppliers, and of government-at-large is being further spurred by the proliferation of negative news and transparency created by the growing popularity and ready accessibility of social media. Add a few "classified" documents disseminated by such organizations as WikiLeaks, and the anti-establishment is slowly but surely growing.

It is almost a cultural throwback to the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States where our gas-guzzling musclecars (yet to experience our first artificially-created exploitative 'gasoline shortage') sported decorative (but thought-provoking) bumper stickers which imparted such wisdom as "Question Authority" and "Visualize World Peace"...with the occasional dark-windowed van sporting something more portentious, such as "The Only Solution Is Revolution."

The trend spells a grassroots groundswell of discontentment and activism. It will be fascinating to see how far this movement will be permitted to escalate and proclaim itself before it is either palliated or repressed by the most powerful and elite elements who are the puppeteers holding most of the strings, and most of the cards, as well.

Regardless, our conformist domestic and global cultures are starting to become riled after years of mainstream media-induced hypnotism and reliance on "too-big-to-fail" bulwark establishments. This has the potential to create an environment which will be increasingly receptive to entrepreneurship, small businesses, and [hopefully] a bit of re-Humanization.

Here is the article:

NetflixHelps People Cut Cable Cord, Report Says

It has now been a couple of years since I cut my cable and began exclusively watching Internet video on my home television. I still feel that it was one of the wiser decisions I've made with technology, saving me hundreds of dollars a year and countless headaches dealing with a cable company.

But was this just a move to be expected of a techie? Some have speculated that cutting the cable cord is simply a fad. But a new report issued on Wednesday suggests that if it is a fad, it's one that's moving into the mainstream.

The report, the result of a survey of 2,000United Statesadultbroadbandusers, found that people who useNetflixto streamInternet videoto their televisions are twice as likely to cancel, or slim down, theircable televisionoptions as they were a year ago.The report comes from the Diffusion Group, aDallas-based media research firm.

When the Diffusion Group surveyed Netflix members in 2010, they found that 16 percent of customers were planning to downgrade or cancel theircable televisionservice. During the same survey this year, the number of customers planning to make that change had doubled to 32 percent.

The report also found that although the majority of those surveyed cited economic reasons and "the need to save money" as a rationale for canceling cable, 34 percent said a growing use ofonline video was the culprit, "two-thirds of which citeNetflix in particular as the primary perpetrator," the report says.

Now, instead of having only the option to pay a cable company to deliver content, people have an array of choices and devices. Netflixclearly saw this trend coming, and over the past year has started offering its video content on mobile phones, tablets, computers, game consoles, or devices that hook up to a television, including Boxee and Apple TV. The company also began offering customers a streaming-only option late last year. ####

Perhaps some positive change will blossom from this new season of discontent. I hope so. Expect interesting times ahead for cult leaders, thought-leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Ultimately, consumers stand to benefit the most.

Faithfully,

Douglas E Castle

Original Published Title Of This Article By Author Douglas E Castle, Chairman of TNNWC: "CONSUMERS AND BUSINESSES - MOVING OFF OF THE GRID."

The author highly recommends that each of his respected readers becomes Pinglerized (a Lingovation™) in order to maximize SEO, search engine ranking, and to exponentially increase both unique visitors and recurring traffic to your website or blog. Leverage this wonderful technology.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Businesses (large and small), government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare providers and even computer security firms are being hacked. Their data (some of which invariably relates to you as a business, an individual, a consumer, and a person with certain affinities, closeted skeletons, health issues and legal or financial problems) cannot be regarded as secure.

The more highly dependent we become on mobile messaging, cyberspace data storage, zip drives, e-commerce and automatic bill payment via computer, the more vulnerable we become.

By hacking, I mean every type of informationa intrusion from social engineering (i.e., where a rogue employee at an insurance or other firm steals data and sells it), to credit card skimming, illicit GPA tracking, downloading of viruses, tracerware (keystroke loggers and the like, as well as GPS "locators"), phishing, trojan horses designed to take over some aspect of an electronic device's functioning, signal interception, secret duplication and re-routing of confidential data, brute force password decryption, hijacking of network connections, turning computers and mobile phones into transmitters of information to third parties, and just the ability to launch a robotic assault against a website or application. Various highly connective social media platforms and applications are helping to ease access to would-be abusers. Apple and Mac users have increased in numbers and percentages, and sure enough, the hackers are finding new opportunities to infiltrate these systems as they have done for years with PCs.

Hackers tend to emulate the viruses and worms that they create. They are very clever, very dangerous, capable of mutation and adaptation, and very good at disguising their presence from the host or victim.

The opportunities for hackers to access and utilize valuable information are increasing with our informational and communications habits -- so too are the opportunities for firms which are developing privacy safeguards, back-ups, firewalls, intrusion detectors, employee access controls, multi-layer security sytems, super-secured storage and security audit programs and assessment systems.

These latter parties will find giant and ever-expanding markets in both the private and public sectors, in organizations of all sizes and industries, and even for each other. Feeding on this insecurity-fueled market and concerned- investor environment (on both Main Street and Wall Street), venture capitalists and accredited angel investors will be increasing their interest in companies that are developing these countermeasure technologies.

With the recent hacking of Citigroup, the IMF, and a number of healthcare firms and record retention and storage facilities, informational security is becoming a recurring front-page news theme.

Related links

Informational security, data recovery, employee "watchware" and other fields are evolving at an accelerating pace, lagging slightly behind the development of new invasion and intrusion techniques and technology by the "black hats." Not surprisingly, many of these "black hats" are the ultimate opportunists -- they create a problem, and then sell an antidote to the disease which they themselves have created.

There will be some wonderful investment opportunities throughout the Global Economy in some early-stage ventures which show some promise in terms of developing scalable, customizable defenses and antidotes.

The author highly recommends that each of his respected readers becomes Pinglerized (a Lingovation™) in order to maximize SEO, search engine ranking, and to exponentially increase both unique visitors and recurring traffic to your website or blog. Leverage this wonderful technology.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Trend-Watching (or "Trend-Spotting") is one of the key functions of every entrepreneur, leader, strategic planner. It can be a tool for locating an emerging business opportunity or idea -- the basis for the start of a business or an entire industry. More importantly, it is an ongoing responsibility necessary in order to avoid corporate or technological extinction.

The biggest mistake made by most otherwise brilliant project managers, visionaries, strategic planners and business captains is a failure to consistently and attentively watch trends, and to create alternative future scenarios which may impact the organizations which they serve. That is why I originally created The Global FuturistBlog, one of the many infomedia blogs and RSS feeds available in the TNNWC constellation of publications, news media, alert bulletins and intelligence instruments.

Recently, the world witnessed a calamitous failure of its capital markets and banking systems -- the warning signs had been there for several years, but those individuals in charge were trying to maximize profits by taking advantage of a market that was not only falling apart -- but a market which could not possibly sustain the level of greed and expectation of value appreciation that these giant institutions were betting on. They were blindsided by a tidal wave that they had bought into, fed and brought upon themselves, as well as upon the peoples of the world.

Words of Wisdom:

1) Live in the present, but with a constant eye toward the future;

2) There is nothing wrong with making a profit and getting out of the game with your winnings;

3) Always diversify your portfolio, both offensively and defensively;

4) Invest in intelligence and be proactive after being briefed on the findings;

5) Incorporate flexibility and the ability to pivot (keep your GO bags packed for any mission that might require your immediate responsiveness) in your organizational structure...regardless of large you become or how successful that you are.

Monopoly lost: Atlantic City's rise and fall

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Four years ago, some Atlantic City casino customers were shelling out $1,000 for a brownie sprinkled with edible gold dust in a Baccarat crystal they could take home.

Nowadays, some wait until 11 p.m. to eat so they can get a steak dinner for $2.99.

At the beginning of 2007, Atlantic City's 11 casinos were at the top of a wave of prosperity. Starting with the 1978 opening of Resorts, the nation's first casino outside Nevada, Atlantic City for years was the only place to play slots, cards, dice or roulette in the eastern half of the United States. The cash kept pouring in, the busloads of visitors kept coming and the revenue charts went one way: straight up.

And then, they didn't. Now, battered by competition from casinos all around it, Atlantic City is in a fight for its very survival.

The resort is furiously trying to remake itself into a vacation destination that happens to have gambling, but with no guarantee it has a winning hand even as other threats loom, including the possible expansion of casinos to north Jersey racetracks and a growing push for online gambling.

Intoxicated by years of success, Atlantic City missed numerous opportunities to diversify its offerings, widen its customer base and fend off competition that clearly was on its way even 20 years ago.

"The atmosphere was a total irrational exuberance; it truly was," said Robert Griffin, CEO of Trump Entertainment Resorts, who worked at Trump properties here in the 1980s and 1990s. "There was a feeling that there was no end to the good times and that the money would never end."

Then, disaster struck the nation's second-largest gambling market. A perfect storm of competition right on its doorstep in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware, coupled with the recession, pummeled Atlantic City worse than any other casino market. In four years, a billion and a half dollars vanished, along with thousands of jobs and tourists. Pennsylvania, with its 10 casinos, is poised to knock Atlantic City into third place at some point next year.

How did things go so wrong so fast?

___

Cars streamed into Atlantic City on May 26, 1978, and people lined the Boardwalk for blocks, waiting to get inside Resorts on the first day it was legal to gamble there.

People bought tickets for buffets they had no intention of eating, just to sneak inside the casino earlier than the rest. Men relieved themselves into plastic coin cups to avoid losing their spot at the tables by going to restrooms. And cash — more than anyone had ever seen and more than management could imagine — flooded into the counting room, to the point that it took nearly an entire day to count it.

"It was euphoria," said Steve Norton, who was Resorts' executive vice president when it opened and now runs a casino consulting firm in Indiana. "I mean, it was an unbelievable time."

One after another in the 1980s, casinos kept coming. Revenues reached a high point of $5.2 billion in 2006.

And then the Pocono Downs harness racing track in Luzerne County, Pa., added slot machines and opened them to the public on Nov. 14, 2006. Suddenly, people in the heart of one of Atlantic City's key feeder markets could drive 10 or 20 minutes to play the slots instead of making a three-hour round trip to Atlantic City. In less than four years, there would be 10 casinos in Pennsylvania, all of which now offer table games, too.

They took in nearly $2.5 billion last year, approaching Atlantic City's $3.6 billion. So far this year, they are running neck-and-neck: $996 million for Pennsylvania, and $1.1 billion for Atlantic City.

"If you didn't anticipate this competition coming, you were asleep at the wheel," said Israel Posner, executive director of the Lloyd Levenson Institute of Gaming at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

David Schwartz, director of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research, said Atlantic City can be successful again, "but it's going to require a reinvention."

"Basically, the city needs to stop looking backward and start looking ahead," he said.

A look back reveals many missteps and lost opportunities. The most obvious: a failure to reinvent the resort as a place to go for more than gambling. Atlantic City belatedly jumped on the bandwagon, adding non-gambling amenities over the past eight years like celebrity restaurants, spas, shopping and top-name entertainment. The Borgata even built a stand-alone luxury hotel called the Water Club, and Harrah's indoor pool has become a cash cow, doubling as one of the city's hottest nightspots.

But back then, anything customers couldn't bet on was seen as a waste of money.

"Nobody wanted to build anything other than casinos," Norton said. "The property values shot up so high, it didn't make sense to build anything else."

There's plenty of blame to go around. Casino owners focused only on their own properties instead of the market as a whole, a habit that Atlantic City is only recently shaking off. Competing against each other instead of Las Vegas was the city's playbook for decades.

Now, the casinos are banding together for joint marketing efforts, and will chip in to help sponsor the biggest names in entertainment, rather than letting one casino pay the whole cost of a Britney Spears or Lady Gaga show, or a rodeo. And three casinos are even thinking of jointly funding a new convention or trade show center in Atlantic City to draw badly needed midweek business.

New Jersey also erred by failing to approve legalized sports betting in 1991 when it was given the chance to do so ahead of a nationwide ban, gambling experts say. A state senator sued the federal government in 2009 to overturn the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, but the suit was dismissed by a federal judge last month.

___

When Griffin, the Trump CEO, lays his head on the pillow at night, he worries that New Jersey will one day succumb to political pressure from lawmakers in the more populous northern part of the state to expand casino gambling to the Meadowlands racetrack, 10 minutes from New York City. Analysts expect it would instantly become a $1 billion market. State law now allows casino gambling only in Atlantic City.

"That would devastate us," he said. "This would become a two-casino town; it wouldn't even take five years. That's what keeps me up at night."

Maddie Downey, a bartender at the Showboat, has her own worries. The single mom has already lost one casino job when the Sands closed in 2006, and worries that gas prices will stay near $4 a gallon, keeping people away from Atlantic City.

"I'm just glad to have this job," she said. "I just hope it doesn't get any worse, and I hope the price of gas comes down."

When the Indian-run Foxwoods casino opened in Connecticut in 1992, it was the closest casino to Atlantic City — and a sure sign that more were to come. Mohegan Sun, another tribal casino, opened in Connecticut four years later. The resort responded by allowing its casinos to stay open 24 hours a day; they formerly had to close for a few hours in the wee hours of the morning. It also introduced new games like poker, keno and racing simulcasts.

But the money kept coming in, and the two Connecticut casinos didn't prove to be a major problem for Atlantic City, which sat on its cards. No new casinos opened until the Borgata in 2003, which would usher in a new era of grand dreams — very few of which would ever come true.

The Borgata touched off a casino arms race, with companies from across the country vying to build the next mega-resort here. At the start of 2008, there were plans for as many as four new casinos; MGM Mirage unveiled a $5 billion, three-tower casino project that would have been the largest ever built here.

Pinnacle Entertainment blew up the Sands to make way for its own $2 billion casino resort, modeled on a beach house. Before setting off the explosives that would bring it down, then-CEO Dan Lee spoke of the importance of keeping the market fresh, new and exciting. The challenge, he said, is "to compete in this new world, or be the next implosion."

Yet by the end of 2008, Pinnacle and MGM's projects imploded on their own, and Revel, the first of the new projects to actually put shovels in the ground, was limping along. It would run out of money in 2009 and halt construction on the interior. Morgan Stanley, its major financer, walked away from the project, deciding it was better to take a nearly $1 billion bath on the deal than to stay in Atlantic City.

After scouring the globe for financing, including asking the Chinese government, Revel CEO Kevin DeSanctis finally secured new financing in February 2011 that allowed the project to resume, with some state tax incentives.

"Every market got hit, but nobody faced the amount of new competition coming online as much as Atlantic City did," said Larry Mullin, who was president of the Borgata at the time and now runs an Australian casino company. "We were just exposed. Nothing was going to stop the convenience customer from trying a product that was closer to them. I just don't think there was any silver, magic bullet. It was a very tough situation."

___

Torn between demands from the New Jersey casino and horse racing industries, New Jersey's incoming governor, Republican Chris Christie, sided in 2010 with the casinos, which provided more tax revenue to the state's coffers. He refused to allow slot machines at the racetracks — something the racing industry has long wanted to keep pace with its competitors in other states.

New Jersey staged a quasi-takeover of Atlantic City's casino and tourist zones; Christie called it "a partnership." But the new tourism zone is run by the state and takes charge of many functions Atlantic City's often dysfunctional municipal government had long struggled with, including safety, cleanliness and economic development. (At one point just a few years ago, four of the previous eight mayors of Atlantic City had been arrested on corruption charges.)

The $30 million in annual payments that the casinos had to pony up to the horse racing industry, in return for keeping slots out of the tracks, will now be used to market Atlantic City nationally. The state rewrote many of its famously strict regulations for casinos, removing, among other things, minimum staffing requirements. They even allowed casinos to keep some jackpots that had built up on progressive slot machine games that they decide to cancel.

State-mandated economic redevelopment funds collected from each casino will now be used solely for projects within Atlantic City; before, the money was spread around the state.

The help cannot come too soon. Casinos are selling at fire-sale prices. Within the past year, The Tropicana, Resorts and Trump Marina have all sold for about 10 cents on the dollar from their values of just a few years ago. The Atlantic City Hilton stopped paying its mortgage in 2009 and is looking for a buyer. The casinos have shed nearly 15,000 jobs since 1997, with more layoffs to come.

The extra marketing money is crucial to Atlantic City's future, said Frank Fantini, a Delaware casino consultant and publisher.

"If it can create that same, "I gotta go party!' atmosphere that Las Vegas has, it ought to be able to work," he said.

Griffin, the Trump CEO and Casino Association president, said Atlantic City should bottom out at around $3.5 billion, then slowly start to grow again.

"There's a lot of pain coming, but I strongly believe that in 2012 you're going to see us coming back," he said. "I definitely think better days are ahead for Atlantic City."

Could that be a new marketing slogan for Atlantic City? Most of America seems to know that "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Yet how many people can correctly cite Atlantic City's tourism slogan, "Always Turned On"? The resort is thinking of a new slogan.

The effort has been going on for three years.

####

And so it goes.

If you are outside reading a book (assuming they are not rendered technologically obsolete by pads and tablets, and they they are not ordered to be burned by some repressive inbound political regime as you are reading this) under a shade tree, look up at the skies every so often just to be certain that the clouds aren't thickening with the threat of rain.

For complete tactical and strategic business planning, marketing, media, lead-generation, technological and capital resources, scalable solutions and tools to support every entrepreneurial start-up, young enterprise, small- to medium-sized business and emerging high-growth company, talk to The National Networker Companies™/ TNNWC Group, LLC.

We are a collaborative entrepreneurial, creative organization offering you hands-on, personalized assistance in every aspect of achieving your monetization, profitability and financial sustainability objectives, domestically and globally.

We don’t just coach you or offer you pre-packaged, push-button solutions – we listen to you, analyze your exact needs, and work within your budget to: 1) create your tool kit and 2) work as your partner to implement your plan by supporting you in the most efficient and productive use of every tool.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Entrepreneurs, Professionals, Executives, Students and Mobile Telephone Users - Your Mobile or Smartphone may put you at a significantly increased risk of cancer. Once again, we find that many silver linings have clouds around them.

Action: There are a number of things that you may be able to do in order to increase your level of risk. The following article, courtesy of BNET will tell you more.

Irrelevant Nostalgia: Mr. Castle personally preferred the 1969-vintage avocado-colored telephones which were mounted to the kitchen wall, with receivers attached to the mounts by long, droopy, curly, cords which tended to get tangled when you impulsively paced back-and-forth about the floor during a particularly intense conversation, usually with a member of the opposite sex on the other end of the call. While these phones probably did not correlate highly with the incidence of cancer amongst their users, it was possible to become so inextricably tangled in the ever-tightening cord that blood circulation to one or more of your limbs could be cut off.

For complete tactical and strategic business planning, marketing, media, lead-generation, technological and capital resources, scalable solutions and tools to support every entrepreneurial start-up, young enterprise, small- to medium-sized business and emerging high-growth company, talk to The National Networker Companies™/ TNNWC Group, LLC.

We are a collaborative entrepreneurial, creative organization offering you hands-on, personalized assistance in every aspect of achieving your monetization, profitability and financial sustainability objectives, domestically and globally.

We don’t just coach you or offer you pre-packaged, push-button solutions – we listen to you, analyze your exact needs, and work within your budget to: 1) create your tool kit and 2) work as your partner to implement your plan by supporting you in the most efficient and productive use of every tool.